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The cost of planning to build new homes and subdivisions could be going up in Saskatoon.
That’s if the city administration’s proposed changes to the application fees for development permits and other applications are forwarded to budget deliberations by city council at its meeting on Wednesday.
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The potential fee increases include everything from permits for one or two-unit detached and semi-detached homes, to subdivision application fees, zoning amendment fees, concept plan fees and many others.
According to a city report, the fees need to go up to meet “set cost recovery objectives and (to) add staff necessary to ensure service levels are maintained or improved.”
Those staff members include one senior planner, a bylaw inspector, a part-time employee in 2026 and two additional bylaw inspectors and a planner in 2027.
Nicole Burgess, CEO of the Saskatoon and Region Home Builders Association, has expressed some concern about the proposed fee increases and how the extra money will be spent by the city.
“The bigger issue that we’re facing right now is around the declining service levels and timelines that we’re getting for those fees,” she said.
Burgess said there have been fee increases in previous years, but service levels and timelines did not improve and, in some cases, became worse, citing delays of well over five weeks over and above normal service and response times.
“We did submit a letter stating that status quo is not acceptable,” she said.
Every delay, Burgess said, adds costs, risk, directly affects housing affordability, and also affects the goal of increasing the supply of homes in the city.
The proposed fee increases aren’t a surprise, though; there were meetings between stakeholders and the city ahead of the release of the new report to council.
“What we’re basically saying is while we don’t like any fee increases, we acknowledge that costs go up and fees go up, and really with them what we want to see is more transparency around finances and how they’re used,” she added.
Accountability is the ultimate goal, said Burgess.
If approved, the fees would increase in 2026 and again in 2027.
The last time the fees were adjusted was during the 2023 budget deliberations, for the 2024/2025 budget year.
